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Monday, December 30, 2013

Cleaning up after a busy family-filled holiday. In addition to ongoing large projects, here is a small warm up still life. This time, I used a blue cloth and a little glass chicken with the reflective brush washer.

I also had my painting "Apple Swirls" accepted into the Women Painters of the Southeast Third Annual Juried Members Exhibition and Sale opening in March 2014. I will post a larger image closer to the opening.

Saturday, December 28, 2013

A small study done as a warm up before working on a large commission. I loved the red reflections of the Christmas cloth napkin on the brush washer.
Hope your Christmas was great....only a little more company and then painting full-time can resume.

Friday, December 20, 2013

Not many more days until Santa has visited and returned to the North Pole. I may have one more that needs to be painted. Today, I worked out painting a background loosely using rectified turpentine. Perhaps, I will be able to show you how that works out soon. I also painted and wiped a jar that just wouldn't work three times. Tomorrow will be better, no doubt!!

Thursday, December 19, 2013

This little painting is a change from Santas but continuing in the season's theme.

Artist Note: I love painting the bright red color and the orange, yellow and purple to give red its form. Recently, I have switched from cadmium yellows and orange to Holbein permanent yellows and orange. The red remains cad red light and alizarin crimson.

Tuesday, December 17, 2013

This is the third Santa painting. I wonder what you think about the "elf on the shelf". I feel like Santa has gotten so aged that he has had to recruit a not-so-nice tattletale.....
I love using Santa to learn to paint. His beard and mustache cover a lot of the face and make it a little easier. That said, today I again wiped one before I got the next one to work.

Monday, December 16, 2013

Another little watercolor of a duck from Sylvan Heights. I often find adding some drips or spots onto the watercolor adds interest.
I also worked on a still life setup: something small with a trial of rectified turpentine in the background. I'll post it tomorrow. The background was very interesting and artistic using this turp. It made the surface a little tacky. Unfortunately, I painted over the background completely losing that interesting effect..but there is always tomorrow!

Saturday, December 14, 2013

Before I start painting the large painting I am working on each day, I start with a small exercise to warm up. Sometimes, the "exercise" takes way too long. However, I always learn from each one . Usually, the little paintings are painted onto a piece of the back of a large painting that didn't work. This habit seems to provide the "magic" because these little gems usually just work out.
This is one of these small paintings. It is another duck from Sylvan heights. I love these colors. Sometime, I will look up what the duck species is and where it is from.

Artist Note: The form is made possible by the warm yellows against the cool cerulean/cobalt blues.

I am working on goals for 2014. I think one of them will be to continue these little studies of impressionistic people. One of my heros, Karin Jurick painted 100 criminals to learn to paint faces in her unique style. Carolyn Anderson didn't tell us how many paintings she painted to learn to paint. Instead, she remarked that "she had done this for so long...." as she masterfully corrected our messed up lips, eyes, legs etc during class. I think 100 studies sounds like a target for 2014. However, I will have to ask people to send me well-lit photo references to get enough material to do this. I would especially like to paint well-lit children for this exercise. These would not be commissioned portraits. For example, the reference Santa of this painting would not find any part of him recognizable in this painting. I even changed the color of his glasses....
Now that he is photographed, I will return to him and fix his nose and the color of his right cheek.
Otherwise, I like him pretty well.
Looking for more Santas to paint!!

Thursday, December 12, 2013

This painting followed 2 wipes. However, the wipes were drawing problems. My color and strokes are improving. I am working on "painterly" paint application.
Probably this is too fresh to post because I think it is improving...
Will recheck tomorrow.

Monday, December 9, 2013

I have two directions in my oil painting presently. The first is still life which prompts me to paint directly, work with color mixing, follow light and learn to paint more "painterly" as Qiang would say.
The second is to learn to see photographs as paintings: to interpret the edges and use brush marks to paint paintings not reproduce the photographic image. Both of these exercises, I hope, will allow me to grow as an artist. Today, I am sharing a painting from a photograph I took.

Artist Note: I like this painting's looseness. I like the lost edges, especially those produced by different colors side by side that are the same value.

Sunday, December 1, 2013

While I have not been posting, I have been painting. Large, complicated, slow paintings and small quick studies of still life objects.
For daily painting exercise, I will work on a small still life setup for the next month. I will put the ones I like on DailyPaintworks and continue to learn from others. Let's see what a month of directed effort can do.

About Me

Sue ChurchGrant is a former pediatrician, now painter, who loves to paint people, especially children caught unaware. She is inspired by intense color and light . Her blog features small original watercolor or oil studies painted almost daily and her larger paintings can be found at suechurchgrant (dot) com